Alcremie Project.

1.0 Creation of Milcery.

The Milcery line was thought to be discovered sometime around the year 50 A.W, though the details have been obscured over the years. Back when they were first uncovered, there were numerous rumors and stories to explain their appearance.

One story posits that Milcery formed when an alchemist infused boiling Dubwool or Gogoat milk with “fae magic”. Whatever that means. Another theory follows the same line, but the milk was infused with Polteageist extract instead. These theories don’t have much to back them up, and no biological link between Milcery and Sinistea have ever been made.

There have been records of Milcery being created in labs, of course. Especially in the 1800s, when their evolution’s cream was seen as a delicacy. Most regions have kind of…blacklisted the recipes, though? In an attempt to avoid the mass creation of Milcery. Which makes sense, I suppose, but still >:/ Makes my job much harder.

Anyway, you can still find the recipes online. The earliest one I could find was from 1834, and the latest was the 1940s. Pretty cool! I now know how to create life. All I need is a bunch of radioactive and unsustainable, unstable materials. I see no downsides to this. (For legal reasons, this entire paragraph is a joke.)

2.0 Alcremie Flavors and Variants.

The molecules that make up a Milcery's body are affected by movement. When shaken or spun around, they take in air, which causes a physical change similar- if not exactly alike- making whipped cream. And that's how Alcremie are made!

That's really a simplified explanation, though. Lots of factors go into Milcery evolution- humidity, time of day, direction they spin, how fast they spin, how long they spin...it's pretty complicated. By far the 'time of day' aspect is the one that most people discuss. From what I know, the time of day matters due to the...light? If that makes sense. Like when evolving, the Milcery's cream also reacts strongly to how much ambient light is in the area, and the colors change. The best way I can describe this is like...Butterfree pea tea mixing with lemon, and how that changes color. This means that if you evolve your Milcery in a dark room with aboslutely no outside light, you'll end up with one of the 'nighttime' forms. Though there have been studies that show that some Milcery- usually wild, not bred in captivity- have an internal clock! So their forms aren't dependent on light alone. (Can you see why I'm invested in this line? >:D)

As of right now, there are nine officially recognized Alcremie cream flavors- Vanilla, Ruby, Matcha, Caramel, Mint, Lemon, Salted, Ruby Swirl, and Rainbow Swirl. I say 'officially', because there's a debate on whether shiny Alcremie should be classified as a different flavor- but we'll get into that later. In a study done by Hammerlocke U in 2019, over 40% of Alcremie Trainers on campus had some form of a 'daytime' Alcremie (Vanilla, Ruby, Ruby Swirl, Caramel), while 60% had a 'nighttime' form (Salted, Lemon, Mint, Matcha). Then there was like. 5% who had a Rainbow Swirl Alcremie. Furthermore, in a study done outside of school grounds, it was determined that Ruby Swirl, Rainbow Swirl, and Vanilla were the most popular flavors, and Matcha and Salted were the least popular. Now, I will say that this report didn't specify whether the survey was about flavor or color or something, so take those statistics with a grain of salt.

Now, onto the 'Variant' aspect of this section. Genetically speaking, there is no difference between the cream of a shiny Alcremie and a standard Alcremie. Furthermore, shiny Alcremie have no difference between forms- for example, a shiny Ruby Cream Alcremie would look the same as a shiny Mint Cream Alcremie. Most scientists have decided to classify the shiny forms as a subset of forms. In a scientific sense, they're the same, with the only difference being coloration.

BUT. Outside of the scientific sphere, there's been a debate on whether 'Shiny Cream' is like. An actual thing. Some people are dead-set on the idea that shiny Alcremie taste different. I. Cannot say, because I do not have a shiny Alcremie. Honestly I think it's like a placebo effect thing. Or like that thing they do with shaved ice? They change the color of the syrup and a different scent and it suddenly tastes different or something? I'm not sure.

On the same note, pretty much the same people (wow!) also talk about whether the type of Sweet the Milcery holds affects the flavor or not. Some people are dead-set that a Mint Cream Alcremie with a Clover Sweet will have an earthier aftertaste as compared to a Mint Cream with a Berry Sweet. This one might have more science backed behind it, especially if the casing around the Sweet had melted into the Milcery's cream during evolution (typically occuring in warmer enviroments!), but as a whole not really. I honestly think people are making a bigger deal out of this than there needs to be.

2.1 Shiny Alcremie Flavors.

Okay so looking back on this I think the whole thing surrounding shiny Alcremie deserves it's own little thing so here we are!

The whole idea of shiny Alcremie cream (which I'll just shorten to shiny cream) being different from standard cream has been aorund for a while- ever since the classification of 'shiny Pokemon' was designated. In fact, way back when (like the 1800s or whatever) a lot of people were convinced Shiny Alcremie were just...another form of Alcremie. Which makes sense. There's some texts that refer to them as 'Licorice Cream Alcremie', with their flavor being described all over the place. Most books just settled on the term 'complex', though.

Anyway, the idea of shiny Pokemon became more prevelant in society, and eventually people realized that shiny Alcremie were not, in fact, licorice flavored, but rather just a standard flavor with a different coloration. ...Supposedly.

Some people didn't take to this too keenly- most of them were like. Bakers and culinary guys, really. And rich people. They were adamant that the coloration changed the flavor, and that shiny Alcremie should be classified as a different flavor. There's actually been petitions over this! None of them really went anywhere though, because this is a stupid debate over sentient whipped cream creatures when other people were dealing with other things.

Even still though, the novelty of shiny cream hasn't worn off in a lot of communities. Because of how rare it is to acquire authentically, lots of fancy restuarants market it as this super cool ingredient. 'Key lime Pie A la mode- with Licorice Cream!' or like. 'Rawst Berry Parfait with Shiny Cream!' or what have you. Now that people know how Shiny Alcremie work (most of them at least), most places tend to seek out Shiny Rainbow Swirl Alcremie, due to the flavor being the most 'complex' and 'fancy' out of all of them (as decided by society. I tend to disagree :p)

I should probably emphasize that all this talk of cream in food and stuff is heavily monitored by the League and other Pokemon Rights Organizations. All restaurants are extensively monitored to make sure they aren't taking too much cream from the Alcremie, or are running some kind of farm for them. Any place that is violating these (really strict!) rules are shut down almost immediately. And it's easy to tell, too, just from the cream alone- A malnourished or ill Alcremie will produce less solid and more runny cream. So a health inspector just needs to see the state of the cream to determine the condition of the Alcremie that produced it!

I'm looking back and that whole paragraph is just a bunch of sleep-deprived thoughts and ramblings. Damn. I'm too tired to change it though so it's staying. This implies that this entire thing ISN'T a bunch of sleep-deprived thoughts though. So. Eh.

3.0 "Alcremie Pageants".

I'm not the best person to explain the biology or cultural hiearchy of Alcremie (as you could probably tell by the first section :/), so I mainly focus on how humans interact with them. It is super fascinating though!! And I really reccomend you read into it!! I'll probably link some good websites on them later, so please!! Just because I don't talk about that here doesn't mean I'm not interested in it! And you should be too :D

Anyway, the main aspect I wanted to talk about with this section is the weird fucking society culture thing that's evolved around Alcremie (pardon my Kalosian). It's basically wine tasting but for cream?

Well, truth be told, it's more of a mixture of sommelier stuff and those beauty pageants for dog Pokemon. There's contests for Alcremie that rate them based off their color, texture, Sweet quality...and also like. Moves. And how well they can execute them. Stuff like that. But a big aspect is the flavor of the cream. The judges are required to taste a little bit of it on some thin, flavorless cracker usually, and then they rate it. The problem is is that there's no real structure to rating cream flavor, it's just kinda up to the judge. And like- say you have a judge that doesn't like mint. Like they just don't like mint flavored anything. That means that if you enter a pageant with your Mint Cream Alcremie, you'll be at an inherent disadvantage.

Some companies behind these events have tried their best to curate a selection of 'unbiased' judges, but like. I think that's kind of pointless. Everyone will always have a flavor preference, you know? Like. I don't think I'd be a good judge for that kind of thing. I don't think any of my friends would, either. Because I'll still have the gut reaction to favor Salted Cream over Matcha, for instance. Like really, what's the point of this category?

(The point is that it was one of the first categories when Alcremie Pageants were concieved, so it's like. They grandfathered it in or whatever.)

ANYWAY. What is ALSO fucked up (again, sorry for Kalosian) again comes back to the flavor of Alcremie. For a lot of these pageants, having a Rainbow Swirl Alcremie or Shiny Alcremie (or, if you're super lucky, a Shiny Rainbow Swirl) is essentially an instant win. Because in a lot of people's eyes, Rainbow Swirl is like. The 'upper class' version of Alcremie. It has the strictest time frame for its evolution, you really have to spin in order to get the proper colors, and the flavor is hard to describe. (That's why so many people use 'complex' for it.) So like of fucking COURSE they're gonna say 'Ooh this flavor is hard to describe and delicious! You get a bonus there!!' and also Rainbow Swirl Alcremie can have more variation in their coloration than other forms so they ALSO can easily win the color category with the wrong judges!! Which like the whole ""Profession"" is filled with!!!!

Oh my Arceus the JUDGES. They're more like preformers tbh. Like they hire c-list celebrities as judges for some pageants. Which like???? Why???? Obviously I'm not saying that ALL the judges or people running the pageants are bad, I'm just saying a lot of them are.

FOR EXAMPLE. The biggest Alcremie Pageant around is this television special that airs every year- The Chantilly Alcremie Pageant. Think of it like the Elite Alcremie Contest. Only the richest can afford to enter and attend, while the like. Common folk have to sit and watch on their tellies at home or something.

The mainstay judges there have a pretty big media prescence, actually- all of them are on Chatter, at least one is on Dreddit, and I think another one is still lingering on Facebook. There's three mainstay judges, and then each year they have one or two 'guest judges' that help 'spice things up' (aka SKEW THE VOTE). They're fine. I guess. If you watch enough of the specials back to back you can see they definitely favor the Rainbow Swirl Alcremie more, but they make up for it by including some other ones. This year's Pageant's winner was a Vanilla Cream with Matcha Sweet, which was pretty cool. (There was a section of the fanbase though that went on a tirade afterwards, talking about how Vanilla was a 'basic' form and shouldn't have ranked that high. Which also leads into the weird fucking heirarchy when it comes to Alcremie flavors and which ones are objectively 'better' (spoiler alert NONE OF THEM ARE.)) But either way it's very clear that if you do in fact have some kind of Alcremie beauty contest, you shouldn't have a category based on flavor. I talk mostly about Rainbow Swirl here but Shinies also get the same treatment on a lot of these pageants- you just don't see them as often, due to a...whole thing with Shiny Alcremie and pageants.

To keep it short: Back when Alcremie Contests were first introduced a lot of people brought in "Shiny" Alcremie in order to get a headstart because the novelty of a Shiny Pokemon was cool. However a LOT OF these guys turned out to be illegally obtained, faked (with black ink), or what have you. So after a lot of people were exposed, Shiny Alcremie started popping up less. Both because Shiny Pokemon are rare, but also because Shiny Alcremie are now heavily scrutinized, and a bunch of people (especially those who watch Madam Chantilly) are very quick to accuse people of falsfying them. But if you have an authentic Shiny Alcremie AND the public's good favor? Dude you're totally set.

So speaking of judges- a while back there was this one judge on Chatter, his name was like Richard or something- started going off on a rant about the different forms of Alcremie which one was objectively better. Like full on, not joking, posting a whole thread about how Matcha Cream were the worst form especially in pageants because their color didn't mesh well with most if not all of the Sweets, and how Ruby Swirl was the best only second to Rainbow Swirl, and it's honestly so funny watching this man break down online. He had built up the persona of being the 'cold, snobby' judge that was hard to get praise from, but it was this incident that led people to realize that 'oh. that's not a bit, that's who he actually is'. Then he called a bunch of people with Matcha Cream Alcremie bitches and then he got removed from the judge's panel. I should try to find the screenshots.

...This got really out of hand, I'm sorry. TLDR; I'm not really a fan of Alcremie Beauty Pageants due to several categories that are easily biased, as well as highlighting the strange ways people view different forms of Alcremie.

3.1 How The Public Views Alcremie.

While I admit the last section ran a little long and...uh...I kinda lost my composure for a bit there ,^_^ the issues surrounding Alcremie Beauty Pageants really just highlight a problem with Trainers and 'Alcremie Fans' as a whole. I don't really know how to talk about this without sounding redundant, so. Here we go!

Basically when it comes to flavors, people are super elitist for no reason. (Some reason actually which I'll discuss) The main form I see bashed on is actually Vanilla Cream, actually, even with those results from that Hammerlocke U study. A lot of the...for lack of a better term, snobbier fans view Vanilla Cream as a kind of basic flavor, or the 'safe option. It's the form seen on a lot of marketing or plushies, it's the one people usually think of first, and it's a super easy form to achieve, compared to others. So popular/used a bunch = unoriginal. Which leads some people into Trainers with Vanilla Cream Alcremie = unoriginal or 'playing it safe'.

Typically, Rainbow Swirl is seen as the superior form (I'm stressing superior so fucking much oh my Arc) due to its complexity in both color, flavor, and how to achieve it. But there's also SOME people who are like 'OOOHH I'm so special and unique' and say that Rainbow Swirl is the bad flavor, not Vanilla Cream!!!! (I was regrettably one of these people in the past. Real big 'pick-me-girl' as I've been told. I've since changed my ways.)